Wednesday, September 24, 2008

"PETA's request comes in the wake of news reports that a Swiss restaurant owner will begin purchasing breast milk from nursing mothers and substituting breast milk for 75 percent of the cow's milk in the food he serves," the statement says."

September 23, 2008Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, Cofounders

Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc.

Dear Mr. Cohen and Mr. Greenfield,

On behalf of PETA and our more than 2 million members and supporters, I'd like to bring your attention to an innovative new idea from Switzerland that would bring a unique twist to Ben and Jerry's.

Storchen restaurant is set to unveil a menu that includes soups, stews, and sauces made with at least 75 percent breast milk procured from human donors who are paid in exchange for their milk. If Ben and Jerry's replaced the cow's milk in its ice cream with breast milk, your customers-and cows-would reap the benefits.

Using cow's milk for your ice cream is a hazard to your customer's health. Dairy products have been linked to juvenile diabetes, allergies, constipation, obesity, and prostate and ovarian cancer. The late Dr. Benjamin Spock, America's leading authority on child care, spoke out against feeding cow's milk to children, saying it may play a role in anemia, allergies, and juvenile diabetes and in the long term, will set kids up for obesity and heart disease-America's number one cause of death.

Animals will also benefit from the switch to breast milk. Like all mammals, cows only produce milk during and after pregnancy, so to be able to constantly milk them, cows are forcefully impregnated every nine months. After several years of living in filthy conditions and being forced to produce 10 times more milk than they would naturally, their exhausted bodies are turned into hamburgers or ground up for soup.

And of course, the veal industry could not survive without the dairy industry. Because male calves can't produce milk, dairy farmers take them from their mothers immediately after birth and sell them to veal farms, where they endure 14 to17 weeks of torment chained inside a crate so small that they can't even turn around.

The breast is best! Won't you give cows and their babies a break and our health a boost by switching from cow's milk to breast milk in Ben and Jerry's ice cream? Thank you for your consideration.

4 comments:

kathleen
said...

1. Cows most likely would not have survived the evolutionary process were it not for humans. We bred them for food and for high volume milk production. Of all the stuff we do to cows, I'd think this would be the least offensive. Maybe I'm wrong. Buying from small farms or farmer's collectives that raise free-range, drug-free cattle in humane conditions can solve a lot of the ills PETA mentions.

2. Unlike humans, dairy cows produce far more milk than the calf needs, so the calf is not "deprived" of food, and dairy farmers can make cheese and ice cream. Humans cannot produce anywhere near the volume needed.

3. Breastmilk is sweeter than Rice Dream, and would be mighty icky as cheese or milk to drink for an adult. That's my personal opinion - you'll have to judge for yourself.

4. Breastmilk is nutritionally correct for a human child, NOT a human adult. It's much fattier and has much higher levels of sugar than an adult should ingest on a regular basis.

5. Humans have a much more varied diet than cows, and as such, milk tastes very different from human to human. That could lead to designer dairy products, but it would wreak havoc with quality control.

6. Don't get me started on Dr. Spock. He had some good stuff to say, but he was a pediatrician, not a scientist.

Right on Kathleen...In addition to your well taken points, Human milk has to come from a woman who is pregnant or has just delivered, and let's face it, they are crazy in this stage [ crazier?? ]. Do we really need to encourage any more women to get pregnant than already do? Think of all the child support repercussions ....bob

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